Chapter fifty
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN YOU
Camerontriestohandme back my phone, but when I do not reach up to take it, he leans over to drop it on the coffee table. “I’m so sorry, Drew. These things happen sometimes, but that doesn’t make it any easier.” He tries to pull me into him, but I back away. He blinks a few times, then reaches out for me again, but I take another step. “Drew,” he pleads, but I hold my ground and raise a hand between us.
“Stop. Don’t come any closer.”
He tries to maintain a brave face, but when I leave to walk through the adjoining door between our rooms, he panics and follows after me. “Come on. You can’t possibly think that your curse had anything to do with that woman choosing to keep her baby?”
I ignore him and move around the room to pack my things and formulate a plan for how I will get out of here. I have less than a couple hundred dollars to my name, not nearly enough for a plane ticket. Enough for me to take a taxi from here tothe Charlotte airport, though, and then I can call Gabe back, or Monika, and ask them to help me buy a ticket.
“You said it yourself, just a second ago,” he continues. “There’s nothing to gain by taking responsibility for other people’s choices. That woman chose to keep her baby after meeting it. It’s terrible for Scott, and Gabe, and you, but that kind of thing has happened before, and it will certainly happen again. It has nothing to do with a curse. It’s just human nature.”
I unplug my phone charger from the wall and struggle to coil it into a neat ball, so I resort to shoving it into my duffle bag and put one of my unworn outfits on top of it so that it doesn’t get caught in the zipper.
“Drew, listen to me. There is no possible way that your curse somehow traveled over six hundred miles from here to New York City to take that baby away from your brother. That doesn’t make any sense. And I refuse to let you—”
“You have no idea how my curse works!” I yell as I wheel around to face him, which stuns him into silence. “I do, though, and every decision that I make has a cost. When I get too far outside of the lines, my curse punishes me by hurting those that I care about the most. It’s a miracle that it hasn’t hurt you yet.”
I turn back to gather my toiletries from the bathroom, gritting my teeth when he follows me inside. “By your logic, then, the consequence for you coming to Ravenwood is that your brother loses his baby?” he asks.
I ignore him and try to push past once I have gathered everything, but he refuses to move out of the doorway.
“No.” I slam my toothbrush down on the countertop. “The consequence for me coming to Ravenwood is that Delaney was murdered, and that I am being framed for it. The consequence for agreeing to fight my curse with you, and for all of this,” I say, gesturing between us, “is what caused my brother to lose his baby.”
Cameron’s eyes widen. “Drew, listen to the words that you just said. You are taking completely unrelated events and trying to connect them as a way to punish yourself for being happy. That’s not what is happening here.”
“Yes, it is,” I argue, then point down to the tile floor at our feet. “I swore to my curse right here, last night, that if it would still let me be in my nephew’s life, that I wouldn’t try to keep you. That I would let you go. But I didn’t. It was a monumental mistake to stay here, and to kiss you again, but the biggest mistake of all, though, was to let myself fall for you when you were never mine to keep.”
His entire body locks up at my words, granting me a window to duck under his arm so that I can get back to my bag that I left on the bed. I tuck the final items into the side pocket, zip it closed, and throw it over my shoulder.
“Where are you going?”
“To the airport. I need to go help my brother. If that makes me a fugitive, then so be it.”
“Can I at least drive you there?” He moves like he is going to follow me out the door, but stops when he sees my face.
“No. And I’m sorry that I let you get wrapped up in my life like this, because you are a wonderful, beautiful person, Cameron. If things were different, and I thought that I had a real chance at happiness with someone, it would have been you. No question.”
With that final statement, I am out the door, but instead of going right towards the elevator, I go left to the stairway. That way, if Cameron decides to come after me, I can at least have a head start.
The lobby is busy with guests arriving to have dinner at one of the three restaurants inside the hotel, so I am granted a small bit of luck by my curse for making the right decision when there are already taxis circling through the curved driveway. As I get in line to wait for a ride, and it becomes clear that Cameron isn’tcoming after me, my already shattered heart pulverizes into even smaller pieces, so all that’s left is no more than dust.
The line moves quickly, and within minutes, I am next behind a group of tourists wearing matching NASCAR Hall of Fame shirts. I am so emotionally spent that I almost miss it when they start to elbow each other as a woman exits the taxi they are waiting to get in. The woman is dressed in black from head to toe, including oversized sunglasses and a chic silk head scarf covering her hair. When she notices the group staring, she covers the bottom half of her face with a leather-gloved hand before any of us can get a good look at her, and hustles inside. The group wonders aloud if she was some sort of celebrity and toss around a few names that I don’t recognize.
Even though I couldn’t care less about famous people, I find myself turning back towards the lobby to get one more look at her. She looks over her shoulder at the same moment in our direction, and a single ringlet of red hair escapes from under her head scarf. My body jolts out of its numb state and back to full attention as she tucks the hair back in and then hurries past the front desk to push the button for the elevator.
“Where are you headed to, ma’am?”
I look away from the mysterious woman to acknowledge the driver and open my mouth to say I am going to the airport, but shut it again. I turn back to the elevators just in time to see them close and start to ascend with her inside.
“Sorry, I have to go,” I say to the confused driver, and leave the line to walk back inside the hotel, my heartbeat spiking with every step.
Even though it makes no sense, my gut is telling me that the woman who just walked by might have been Leah. If it was, why would she walk right past me without saying hello? Unless I am completely wrong, and the woman was just a celebrity after all. There are tons of actresses with red hair, even I know that. Iam not sure how popular a destination Charlotte is for famous people, but this is a Ritz-Carlton, so the demographic fits.
I pause inside the lobby to dial Monika’s number. She doesn’t answer her cell, so I call the store again.
“Book and Barrel, this—”
